Walkout for Washington: A Chance to Fight for Your Raise
Yesterday, our bargaining team met with OFM. For months, they've delayed engaging with us on compensation. Now we're down to the wire, with just one session left to bargain on behalf of the thousands of union siblings depending on a raise to feed your families and pay your bills. And they had the nerve to remind US that the clock is ticking!
Disrespect at the table is disrespect to the worker. You need to be mad.
We think you should also know that management at many of your workplaces doesn’t even respect you enough to show up and participate in bargaining—out of the 12 colleges in our coalition, we have regularly seen just three or four represented at the table.
The colleges also don't respect you enough to get back to the OFM lead negotiator with the data they've requested to be able to respond to our proposals.
They're forgetting that we’re human beings who need to eat and have shelter. We aren't machines. We deserve better.
We’re doing everything we can to try to get a fair deal for our members. To address safety concerns. To make your work and lives easier with proposals that ask little of the colleges but would make a big difference for us. They're not meeting us in the middle.
If this makes you as angry as it makes us—please, join us to Walkout for Washington on September 10.
Come outside and raise your voice for yourself and your coworkers, so you can have a decent contract and a meaningful raise.
The way to make our needs heard is for us to show we have strength in numbers. When our union siblings from Local 304 came out and protested outside our last bargaining session, OFM moved.
Now we need to shake the earth so we can get this over the finish line.
In solidarity,
Your 2025-2027 Bargaining Team
- Tonya Rehberg, Community Colleges of Spokane
- Ward Kaplan, Community Colleges of Spokane
- Kimi Hanson, Everett Community College
- Scott Beals, Green River College
- Amanda Clifford, Green River College
- Tracy Stanley, Lower Columbia College
- Tom Cline, Peninsula Community College
- Thuy Nguyen, North Seattle College
- Diane Ellis, Seattle Central College
- James Ellis, Seattle Colleges District
- James 'Ric' Doike-Foreman, Shoreline Community College
- Sandy Long, South Seattle College
- Patricia Hermoso, Tacoma Community College
- Michael Greenhouse, Tacoma Community College
- Dan Andreason, Whatcom Community College